We all go through difficult, painful, sorrowful experiences that we didn’t ask for. Not one of us had a choice about being born. However, we still have an opportunity to enjoy an abundant and peace-filled life, even with the challenges of sinful world around us.

Everyone has been given two incredible gifts to free them from the painful bondage of anger, depression, guilt, and sorrow. With the right exercise of these two gifts, anyone can be freed to live a life of peace. We can have satisfaction here and now, despite the imperfect conditions of this world we didn’t chose to enter.

The first gift is faith—the ability to trust even though the person or thing we are trusting can’t be verified with the senses.

The second gift is the power of choice. We have the ability to choose who and what to put our faith in. We also have the power to decide how to respond to life’s challenges.

Our healthy use, or damaging abuse, of these two gifts determines whether we will remain miserable victims or be freed to live happy, peace-filled lives. We can choose to remain distant from God and place our faith in our own ideas about life. We can refuse to get to know the Lord as He really is. However, consider this: “if you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” The way we think about life can determine whether we experience bondage or freedom (Proverbs 23:7). What will you choose?

Exercise your power to choose. Take the time to read and contemplate God’s Word. Give Him the right to show you His true character of love and His healing way to an abundant, peace-filled living. Choose to place your faith in God’s ways of responding to life’s situations.

The way we use of the gifts of choice and faith will also have eternal effects:

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Psalm 16:11).

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away (Revelation 21:3-4).

When bad things do happen to us, it is not because we purposely chose to experience them. But when God gave His Son to suffer and die for us, He did it by choice! Jesus Christ chose to live on this corrupt and pain-filled earth, to suffer and die for us, because He loves you and He loves me.